1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cash dispenser which may be installed in a bank or similiar monetary facility for automatically dispensing bills in response to customer's operations and, more particularly, to a cash dispenser capable of offering a plurality of kinds of bills.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A cash dispenser is constructed such that, when a customer inserts an identification card into the dispenser and then performs a sequence of necessary operations, the dispenser releases a certain amount of bills as demanded by the customer, as is well known in the art. At the instant when the dispenser produces bills as stated, it prints out particulars of the account on a slip and ejects such a slip together with the bills. Generally, a cash dispenser of the type having a plurality of independent safes to dispense different kinds of bills as desired is known in the art.
FIG. 1 is a schematic side elevation showing a prior art cash dispenser of the type described. As shown, the prior art cash dispenser includes a housing 1 which is provided with a bill outlet 2 at its front end and a rear door 3 at its rear end. A disbursing mechanism 4 is installed in the housing 1 for presenting bills to a customer. Although not shown in the figure, there are further provided on the front end of the housing 1 an operation board on which various keys are accessible to enter a customer's code, a desired amount of money and other necessary data, and a display for guiding a customer during manipulation of the operation board and showing various kinds of information. The housing 1 accommodates therein a voice generator for producing audible messages in association with the display, a card reader/writer, a printer, a power source mechanism, and a controller for controlling the entire cash dispenser.
The disbursing mechanism 4 includes a shutter 5 which is openably disposed in the bill outlet 2, and a stage 6 located in the vicinity of the shutter 5 for stacking bills thereon. The stage 6 is usually held in a horizontal position and is rotatable downward about one end thereof as indicated by dash-and-dot lines as needed. A stacking roller 7 is positioned at one end of the stage 6.
A first safe 8 and a second safe 9 individually store therein bills which may be dispensed by the cash dispenser. Here, the bills in the first safe 8 and those in the second safe 9 are assumed to be Y1000 (one thousand yen) bills and Y10,000 (ten thousand yen) bills, respectively. The safes 8 and 9 are disposed one above the other in the neighborhood of the rear door 3. When the rear door 3 is opened, the safes 8 and 9 may each be pulled out to the rear of the disbursing mechanism 4.
Feeding means 10 and 11 are positioned at outlets of the first and second safes 8 and 9, respectively. Each of the feeding means 10 and 11 includes a pick-up roller for feeding Y1000 bills or Y10,000 bills one by one from the safe 8 or 9 associated therewith, a feed roller for driving the bill picked up by the pick-up roller to a transport path which will be described, and a reverse roller for preventing two or more bills from being fed together (hereinafter referred to as an overlap feed).
Transport paths 12a, 12b and 12c are provided for transporting bills while holding them, and each is made up of a belt, rollers, etc. The feeding means 10 is connected to the stacking roller 7 by the transport path 12a while the feeding means 11 is connected to the stacking roller 7 by the transport paths 12b and 12c.
A reject safe 13 is located immediately below the stage 6. A full sensor 14 is located in the vicinity of an open top of the reject safe 13 for sensing a full condition of the safe 13. While the reject safe 13 may be removed from one side of the disbursing mechanism 4, it in practice is removed from the disbursing mechanism 4 by opening the rear door 3 and then pulling out the disbursing mechanism bodily to the rear of the housing 1.
Although not shown in the figure, a sensor for monitoring the conditions of transport bills and a discriminating section for identifying the kind of bills and counting the bills are disposed on the transport paths 12a to 12c of the disbursing mechanism. A controller, not shown, controls the operations of the shutter 5, stage 6, feeding means 10 and 11 and transport paths 12a to 12c in response to the outputs of the above-mentioned sensor and discriminating section as well as data keyed into the operation board.
In operation, when a customer inserts a card into a card inlet/outlet, not shown, and then manipulates keys on the operation board to enter a code and a desired amount of money, the feeding means 10 and 11 feed Y1000 bills and Y10,000 bills one by one out of the safes 8 and 9, respectively. Each bill coming out of the safes 8 and 9 is conveyed along the transport paths 12a to 12c and stacked on the stage 6 by the stacking roller 7. After bills of the amount and number requested by the customer have been stacked on the stage 6, a slip printed with particulars of the account is fed from a printer, not shown, onto the stack of bills. Then, the shutter 5 is opened by suitable means, not shown, so that the customer may pick up the bills from the stage 6 through the outlet 2.
When any of the bills being driven along the transport paths 12a to 12c is determined to be in an unusual condition of transport, alien with respect to kind or uncountable, it is piled on the stage 6. Thereafter, the stage 6 is rotated downward as indicated by an arrow by predetermined means, not shown, so that such unusual bills are dropped into the reject safe 13 together with other or normal bills. After the stage 6 has been restored to its horizontal position, the same sequence of steps, i.e., feeding bills, transporting the bills and stacking the bills on the stage 6 is repeated. The resulting stack of bills are presented to a customer together with a slip which is fed from the printer.
Assume that a customer fails to pick up bills, i.e., a customer has forgotten to remove bills after the shutter 5 has opened. Then, the shutter 5 is closed upon the lapse of a predetermined period of time and the stage 6 is rotated downward to deposit those bills into the reject safe 13.
A cash dispenser of the type collecting bills inadvertently left unremoved and unusual or defective bills independently of each other is also known in the art. As shown in FIG. 2, this type of cash dispenser includes an extra box 14 located below the stage 6 and arranged next to the reject safe 13. The reject safe 13 is connected to the trailing end of the transport path 12c by an additional transport path 12d. A discriminting section is disposed on the transport path 12c for identifying the kind of bills and detecting skew, overlap feed and other troubles associated with bills.
Normal bills free from defects as determined by the discriminating means are transported to the end of the transport path 12c and then stacked on the stage 6 by the stacking roller 7. On the other hand, unusual bills detected by the discriminating means are transported to the end of the transport path 12c and then collected into the reject safe 13 by way of the transport path 12d. Further, when a customer fails to remove bills after the shutter 5 has been opened, the shutter 5 is closed upon the lapse of a predetermined period of time and the stage 6 is rotated downward to drop those bills into the box 14. Subsequently, the stage 6 is rotated upward to the horizontal position.
The prior art cash dispenser of the first-mentioned type has various problems left unsolved. Specifically, since the two exclusive safes individually assigned to Y1000 bills and Y10,000 bills and the reject safe are independent of each other, they have to be mounted and dismounted in the event of operation of the cash dispenser or of close inspection of bills, for example, and it is difficult to carry all the three safes at the same time. The cash dispenser therefore cannot be operated or transported with efficiency. Bills determined to be unusual by the discriminating section are rejected and collected into the reject safe together with normal bills which are detained on the stage for a short period of time. This not only reduces the efficiency of use of the available fills but also results in the need for an extra period of time for repeating the entire procedure.
Each of the safes is configured to exclusively accommodate a single kind of bills therein, and only two kinds of bills can be identified. More specifically, the exclusive safe for Y1000 bills and the exclusive safe for Y10,000 bills cannot accommodate any other kind of bills, and the controller controls the cash dispenser on the assumption that the cash dispenser dispenses such two kinds of bills only. Hence, operating the cash dispenser by loading it with a great number of bills of the same kind as may be desired on a holiday, nighttime and at an unmanned facility, for example, is impracticable. In this sense, the prior art cash dispenser lacks flexibility.
Another problem concerning the flexibility of operation is that even though the safe for Y1000 bills may accommodate Y10,000 bills, the Y10,000 bills fed from the safe will be determined to be of an alien kind and therefore rejected. Even if the safe for Y10,000 bills is shifted to the position which is originally allocated to the safe for Y1000 bills, it will be prevented from settling in that position by an arrangement which is adapted to eliminate erroneous insertion of a safe or the Y10,000 bills will be rejected by the discriminating section due to the absence of means for informing such section of the replacement of Y1000 bills with Y10,000 bills. This also makes it impossible for the cash dispenser to be operated with a great number of bills of the same kind.
Generally, the maximum number of bills which a cash dispenser of the kind described can offer for one transaction or payment is predetermined, e.g. fifty. It has been customary to set the same value as such a maximum number of bills invariable as a threshold for the detection of a state in which bills are about to run out, i.e., a near-end state. When a sensor or similar means senses the near-end state, the operation of the cash dispenser is automatically interrupted. In practice, however, it rarely occurs that bills are dispensed to the very limit by one transaction. It follows that once the near-end condition is sensed, any further payment becomes unavailable despite the fact that a substantial number of bills may still be present in the cash dispenser, resulting in poor efficiency of use of the fills available.
Parallel to the progress of automatic transactions, there is an increasing demand for the installation of a greater number of cash dispensers in a limited space. To meet this demand, there has been proposed a cash dispenser which may be situated against a wall and is accessible from the front for maintenance, and a cash dispenser which may be located at a distance from a wall and is accessible from the rear for maintenance. A problem with the prior art cash dispenser is that the feeding means are fixed in place at the deepest end of the insertion path to be capable of abutting against the bills which are stored in the respective safes. In this condition, the feeding means obstructs the insertion of the safes along the insertion path and therefore prevents the insertion path from being defined throughout the front and rear ends of the cash dispenser, limiting the ability to perform maintenance on either the rear access type or the front access type of dispenser. This problem cannot be solved unless two different types of products are prepared at the sacrifice of cost.
In light of the above, an arrangement may be made such that the feeding means are individually movable into contact with the bills in the safes after the safes have been inserted into the cash dispenser. However, as the safes are repeatedly mounted and dismounted while the cash dispenser is used, the accuracy of the feeding means is affected.
Another approach for overcoming the above problem may be mounting the feeding means on the safes themselves. However, this brings about another problem that each safe becomes heavy and difficult to operate.
The feeding means of the prior art cash dispenser are securely mounted at the deepest end of the insertion path for the previously stated purpose. Hence, the number of safes which are independent of each other and mounted one by one have to be increased with an increase in the kinds of bills handled, resulting in a large-scale cash dispenser and troublesome operations for close inspection.